1.
French presidential election, 1848
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The first-ever French presidential election of 1848 elected the first and only president of the Second Republic. The election was held on 10 December 1848 and led to the victory of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte with 74% of the vote. The constitution only included provision for one round, and in the absence of a majority for any candidate, Louis-Eugène Cavaignac seemed certain to win, and the Assembly would have most certainly elected him in the absence of an absolute majority. However, Bonaparte had no political career behind him and was able to depict himself as all things to some men. A good proportion of the working class, on the other hand, were won over by Louis-Napoleons vague indications of progressive economic views. His overwhelming victory was all due to the support of the non-politicized rural masses, to whom the name of Bonaparte meant something, as opposed to the other. Bonaparte received a plurality or majority in all departments except the Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Morbihan, thus did Bonaparte become the second president in Europe and the first French president to be elected by a popular vote

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United States presidential election, 1848
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The United States presidential election of 1848 was the 16th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7,1848. It was won by Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party, who ran against Lewis Cass of the Democratic Party, incumbent President James K. Polk, having achieved all of his major objectives in one term and suffering from declining health, kept his promise not to seek re-election. The contest was the first presidential election took place on the same day in every state. The Whigs in 1846–47 had focused all their energies on condemning Polks war policies and they had to reverse course quickly. In February 1848 Polk surprised everyone with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War, the Whigs in the Senate voted 2-1 to approve the treaty. Then, in the summer, the Whigs nominated the hero of the war, while he did promise no more future wars, he did not condemn the Mexican-American War or criticize Polk, and the Whigs had to follow his lead. They shifted their attention to the new issue of slavery could be banned from the new territories. The choice of Zachary Taylor was made almost out of desperation, he was not clearly committed to Whig principles, the Democrats had a record of victory, prosperity, and the acquisition of both Oregon and the Southwest. It appeared almost certain that they would win unless the Whigs picked Taylor, Taylor ultimately declared himself a Whig, and easily took their nomination, receiving 171 delegate votes to defeat Henry Clay, Winfield Scott, Daniel Webster and others. Former President Martin Van Buren once again sought the Democratic nomination, Cass had served as Governor and Senator for Michigan, as well as Secretary of War under Andrew Jackson, and from 1836 to 1842 as ambassador to France. Van Buren had burned for the nomination, but he had wanted it on a Free Soil platform, neither his name nor his stand received any support at the Democratic convention. The Free Soil Party, was organized for the 1848 election to oppose expansion of slavery into the western territories. Much of its support came from disaffected anti-slavery Barnburner Democrats and Conscience Whigs, the party was led by Salmon P. Chase and John Parker Hale and held its 1848 convention in Utica and Buffalo, New York. Van Buren knew that the Free Soilers had not the slightest chance of winning, rather that his candidacy would split the Democratic vote, bitter and aging, Van Buren did not care despite the fact his life had been built upon the rock of party solidarity and party regularity. He loathed Lewis Cass and the principle of sovereignty with equal intensity. Despite their significant showing in the presidential election, certain events would conspire to remove the Liberty Party from political significance. Initially, the nomination was to be decided in the fall of 1847 at a Convention in Buffalo, there, Senator John P. Hale was nominated over Gerrit Smith, brother-in-law to the partys previous nominee James G. Birney. Leicester King, a judge and state senator in Ohio, was nominated to be Hales running mate